How, then, does psychoanalytic theory imagine this singular 'self' developing? And what does this 'singularity' consist of? Different theorists of course explain it in differing ways, but at the heart of all such explanations is a notion of the self as fragile and subject to collapse.

Freud, for example, in his essay on 'The "Uncanny"', writes about the importance of the double in the early development of the self. This he regards as "a preservation against extinction", as "an insurance against the destruction of the ego": in other words, the belief that one might have a 'double' shores up belief in one's own (fragile) existence. An example of this can be seen in children's development of imaginary friends: a kind of repetition of the self that confirms the existence of the child and supports it in situations of psychological threat. The psychological helpfulness of such doubling is short-lived, however. Freud goes on to argue that for the development of a secure adult self the double must eventually disappear. If identification with it continues, the subject will eventually be "in doubt as to which his self is." From having been "an assurance of immortality" the double becomes "the uncanny harbinger of death."

In a rather different way of explaining the development of psychological identity, Jessica Benjamin, developing her ideas from the work of D.W. Winnicott (which she describes as "one of the most radical reformulations of psychoanalytic thought in [the twentieth] century") focuses on the way in which a sense of self develops when the child has to become separate from its mother. For normal development the child must achieve an objective view of the mother, recognising her as a separate but equivalent centre of self.

However, this objective view will always co-exist with a continuing subjective view: a fantasy of the mother as a continuing part of the self. In an ideal resolution of the imperative to recognise the self and the mother as independent and equivalent subjects, the mother would be perfectly recognised as "other." But, as Benjamin states, "recognition is a capacity of individual development that is only unevenly realised." To be a subject is to be in a state of continuing negotiation between self and other. However, Benjamin's theoretical perspective and Freud's work 'The "Uncanny"' suggests the potential for collapse of the self, and this is the point at which I return to Soyinka's definition of fear.

To experience fear is to experience threat to the sense of self, to return to the fragility of subjectivity that always shadows us: to feel, in Soyinka's words, that part of oneself has been appropriated. As he writes in his poem 'Purgatory':

Here, through fear and the necessary strategies for survival, 'sanity' is 'gelded' - that is, neutered - and the mind is stripped of part of itself. The sense of self is weakened, confined behind limiting walls.

To have a sense of self also means being able to enter into dialogue with other separate and distinct beings. But dialogue, Soyinka argues, is no longer possible when the enemy is furtive and invisible. This leads to the even greater fear that he associates with 'quasi-states'. This is explored in the second lecture.

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Content last updated: 07/07/2004

About the author

Lynda Morgan completed her Ph.D thesis on South African settler fiction at the School of Oriental and African Studies (the University of London), and her main literary interests continue to be in African literature and colonial/postcolonial studies. She publishes papers in these areas, and regularly contributes to national and international conferences. In August she will deliver a paper on South African and Australian settler fiction at the ICLA Congress in Hong Kong. She is also a published poet.

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